Soil disposal in Rutland raises fears

The town of Rutland has a problem. Tons and tons of mildly contaminated soil from sites in Boston and Cambridge are being dumped on a private farm.

By Lonnie Shekhtman CORRESPONDENT

The town of Rutland has a problem.

Tons and tons of mildly contaminated soil from sites in Boston and Cambridge are being dumped on a private farm.

Because the soil is not contaminated enough to raise red flags with the state Department of Environmental Protection , it is largely unregulated.

The town's environmental safety and health is being ensured only by the private businesses profiting from the soil's disposal.

That has left the residents of Rutland to fend for themselves, as calls for the DEP to get involved have fallen on deaf ears. For months, town residents have been fighting to put an end to the project.

Rutland has found some allies in Worcester, because the farmland receiving the soil is surrounded by wetlands that feed into the water supplies for Worcester, Rutland and Holden.

“There's something fishy about this deal and it's got us worried,” said Philip D. Guerin, director of environmental systems for Worcester's Department of Public Works.

“Someone is getting money through this deal. We're concerned that the ones profiting the most from this are the ones in charge of it.”

The owner of Jordan Dairy Farms, Randy Jordan, said he is not receiving any money for the soil.

“I'm not getting paid, but nobody needs to know that,” he said. “What I get out of it is an agricultural field. Before I could not farm it, and now I can, because they're making it relatively flat for me and burying some stones.”

The conflict of interest and lack of transparency is at the crux of the problem for officials in Rutland and Worcester. They believe the level of soil testing at the originating site is inadequate, are concerned that there's no testing of soil that's arriving in Rutland to confirm its origin and quality, are uneasy about receiving supposedly approved soil from hazardous sites, and disappointed about DEP's hands-off approach, despite their many pleas for help.

What has also become clear as the communities objected is that dumping tons of mildly contaminated soil is not only legal in Massachusetts, but a common tactic of a private soil disposal industry that is minimally regulated.

From the state's perspective, the hands-off approach has led to many more contaminated sites being cleaned up. In 1993 the Licensed Site Professional program privatized the soil disposal industry by allowing state-approved scientists and engineers to assess risk and oversee cleanup of contaminated sites.

Before the LSP program was established, the state was able to clean up only a couple of hundred sites a year, according to DEP spokesman Edmund Coletta.

Since 1993, however, 30,000 sites statewide have been cleaned, he said.

In Rutland, officials were almost as upset about a lack of notification as they were about the contaminated soil being trucked into town.

As it turns out, Jordan Dairy Farms, at 51 Muschopauge Road, did not need the town's permission to accept the soil.

Farms are exempt from the local zoning laws that would have required a developer to obtain approvals from various boards. (Although the soil is being dumped near wetlands, it has not yet been determined to be within 100 feet of wetlands, which would have triggered a conservation commission review).

The role of the property at 29 Overlook Road, owned by Richard Williams, has been overstated. The property has an Agricultural Preservation Restriction, and the land has not accepted any soil. Mr. Williams also owns the property at 51 Muschopauge Road, the site of Jordan Dairy Farms. Mr. Williams and Kevin Gervais, principal of Lighthouse Environmental Management LLC of Clinton, the soil disposal company, said the soil has only been delivered to Jordan Dairy Farms.

As for state notification, there basically is none.

If the licensed site professional hired by Lighthouse — in this case, a company called EnviroTrac — determines that soil toxicity is below a “reportable concentration ” — meaning it doesn't exceed state limits — the project essentially falls off the regulatory radar, at least until problems occur and the DEP is called in to help. And there is no DEP requirement for Lighthouse or EnviroTrac to notify local officials.

Patrick Hannon, who's been in the soil business for 15 years and has faced his own share of controversies, is consulting for the town on the issue, pro bono.

“It's like the environment is for sale for the sake of building an office building in downtown Cambridge,” Mr. Hannon said. “They're finding a crack in the regulation, and driving a Mack truck through it.”

Town officials became concerned about the soil when they started seeing 18-wheeler trucks coming over and over down Wachusett Street (Route 68). They became even more upset when they learned that Lighthouse was bringing into town unwanted soil from 181 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, where new construction for Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research is underway. The site has soil considered above acceptable limits by the DEP.

Maureen McCaffrey, head of the project on the MIT side, said in an email that MIT stopped sending soil to Rutland in February, when it learned that the town's Board of Health issued a cease-and-desist order to Lighthouse and Jordan Dairy Farms.

She also said that none of the soil sent to Rutland was located in the highly contaminated areas of the site.

Mr. Gervais, principal of Lighthouse, explained that this is possible because “99.9 percent of everything that I'm dealing with are deep, deep excavations,” so he's tapping into soil that's theoretically too deep to be affected.

The MIT soil helped fan the fire in Rutland, where residents grew increasingly wary that the people profiting most from the soil transfer are responsible for policing themselves.

Brad Van Renterghem, a town resident who is a geologist with 12 years experience in cleaning up gas stations, is producing a report for the Board of Health on the soil. He wondered if the soil had been tested for asbestos, since that was once commonly used in construction, and can easily become airborne.

“If you go out to that property on a dusty day when they've got the bulldozers there working, moving all these soil piles, that's going to generate dust and that dust, if it's picked up by the wind, is going to go on other people's property, it's going to go in nearby wetlands and it might even make its way to the surface of Muschopauge Pond and Quinapoxet Reservoir, depending on which way the wind is blowing that day,” he said.

Whether the farm is close enough to the wetlands to cause concern, legally, is still unresolved, but Jordan Dairy Farms has been working to stay compliant with DEP regulations around this issue.

In Worcester, Mr. Guerin said his department has stepped up water-testing efforts, collecting weekly samples from three sources near the farm.

“Results don't show anything of concern to date,” he said in an email.

Worcester was hoping to have a contractor in place in April — with a $100,000 price tag — to conduct tests on random dirt samples from trucks coming into Rutland. But that contractor's hiring has been delayed.

Rutland's Board of Health, Board of Selectmen, Conservation Commission and volunteers are working furiously to regain control of the situation. Despite its financial troubles, the town has managed to designate money for soil testing, which has yet to begin.

Also, Joseph Dell'Aquila, chairman of the Rutland Conservation Commission, is drafting new town bylaws that will address soil importation, based on ones developed in Berlin, which has been dealing with a similar case, also involving Lighthouse.

Mr. Jordan, the owner of the farm, said that he has more officials visiting his farm than he can count.

“We've had every board here that you can read about to look at this project and nobody has found a problem with it. ... We're the largest farm in Central Mass. Do you think we'd do anything to jeopardize the future of the farm?”